Johnson Lab
Explore The Johnson Lab
The Johnson Lab advances family medicine by integrating four core areas: (1) Scientific Training in Addiction Research Techniques (START), which is an NIH-funded research education and workforce development program, (2) sociological and epidemiologic research on behavioral health, substance use, and recovery, (3) Community and Art-Based Research, Dissemination, and Interventions (CARDI), and (4) forensic sociology, which applies behavioral health science to legal systems. Together, these areas serve family medicine by translating clinical challenges rooted in trauma, violence, addiction, and justice involvement into research, training, intervention, and systems-level action.
Scientific Training in Addiction Research Techniques (START)
START is a year-long, hybrid research education program that trains graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty to conduct substance misuse research using data from the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. This work is directly relevant to family medicine because it builds capacity to understand and address behavioral health, substance use, and developmental risk factors that present in primary care across the lifespan. Trainees receive structured coursework, mentorship, analytical support, travel support, and guidance on developing a first-author manuscript with senior collaborators. The HBCD Study is the largest long-term study of early brain development and child health in the United States, following children from infancy through early childhood to understand how prenatal and early life experiences shape development. The ABCD Study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in adolescence, tracking nearly 12,000 youth from ages 9–10 into early adulthood to examine how childhood experiences affect brain, behavior, and health outcomes.
START is designed to build a highly trained addiction research workforce. Prior experience with HBCD or ABCD data is not required. Eligible applicants include current graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty members. Application materials include a one-page Statement of Interest, curriculum vitae, unofficial transcript, and an optional Letter of Support from an advisor, PI, or department chair.
The program includes a $4,000 stipend, a mentoring mosaic including a primary mentor, access to peers and leading experts, training in data collection, analysis, and dissemination, analytical and travel support, and the opportunity to develop a first-author manuscript. START especially welcomes applicants who have felt undervalued or overlooked in traditional training pathways.
Advancing Family Medicine through Sociological and Epidemiological Research
The Johnson Lab conducts sociological and epidemiological research to advance family medicine by identifying and addressing behavioral health, substance use, and recovery challenges that emerge across clinical and community settings. The Stress Process of Recovery and Engagement in Substances and Service Outcomes (ESPRESSO) is a research study focused on behavioral health processes in real-world settings. The proposed project quantitatively and qualitatively investigates and disseminates the mechanisms underlying the crisis in substance use disorder (SUD) and SUD treatment services among justice-involved adolescents (JIA). The study examines how individuals experience stress, regulate emotions, and make decisions in everyday life. Using innovative and ecologically valid data collection approaches, ESPRESSO aims to generate insights that inform prevention and intervention strategies.
Community and Art-Based Research, Dissemination, and Interventions (CARDI)
CARDI develops and evaluates scalable, culturally grounded behavioral health interventions that use art, storytelling, performance, and community-engaged dissemination to address trauma, emotional regulation, violence prevention, and behavioral health. This program includes the On Sight intervention and study, as well as Mindfulness and Acting for Social-emotional Knowledge and Skills (MASKS).
On Sight is a performance-based behavioral health intervention developed to address youth gun violence and related behavioral health risks through storytelling, humor, cultural engagement, and practical skill-building. Youth gun violence remains a major public health problem in the United States, and existing interventions often struggle to engage youth in ways that are culturally resonant, emotionally compelling, and scalable across community settings. This mixed-methods study examines On Sight as a multi-site, multi-component intervention delivered across university and community settings.
The intervention includes a live performance, film adaptation, participant workbook, facilitator guide, workshop, and train-the-trainer model. The study uses a pre-post design with qualitative components to examine participant outcomes and experiences following exposure to the intervention. Results will describe participant characteristics, pre-post changes in targeted behavioral health outcomes, qualitative themes regarding participant experience and perceived impact, and integrated findings related to hypothesized mechanisms of change. On Sight represents an innovative, culturally grounded behavioral health intervention that addresses youth gun violence through multi-level engagement with emotional regulation, conflict resolution, social norms, and community healing.
Mindfulness and Acting for Social-emotional Knowledge and Skills (MASKS) is a UCLA IRB-approved research study, IRB-25-1631, that investigates naturally occurring practices in acting instruction that may support emotional regulation and behavioral health, with a focus on adolescents. The study involves observational research within UCLA Extension acting courses and Groundlings training environments, where acting exercises and instructional strategies are examined as potential tools aligned with trauma-informed care, stress management, and emotional self-regulation. The project examines how acting training techniques such as emotional memory, body awareness, movement, voice work, centering, self-awareness, and empathy development may support behavioral health outcomes. Existing scientific literature suggests that mastery of emotional and physiological regulation processes can play a role in addressing trauma, emotional dysregulation, addiction, and violence. This study evaluates how these mechanisms may emerge in real-world acting instruction and whether acting and storytelling can function as practical tools for improving emotional regulation and behavioral health.
Forensic Sociology
Dr. Johnson is a pioneer of forensic sociology, an applied field that uses sociological and behavioral health science to explain how trauma, social conditions, and unmet care needs shape behavior across the life course. This work is directly related to family medicine because many justice-involved individuals have histories of untreated trauma, substance use, developmental disruption, and behavioral health needs that were missed or inadequately addressed in families, schools, clinics, and communities. By applying these insights in legal contexts such as mitigation and capital cases, it extends core principles of prevention, diagnosis, and intervention beyond the clinic to populations most affected by structural disadvantage. This work examines how trauma, poverty, community violence, lack of care, institutional failure, neurodevelopmental disruption, and untreated mental illness shape behavior over time. It helps expose the systemic drivers that are often overlooked when people are reduced to the worst act of their lives.
This work also functions as a systems-level intervention. It bridges gaps between science and the justice system, combats the criminalization of mental disorders, and improves mitigation in capital and serious felony cases. In this sense, forensic sociology is both legal advocacy and public health intervention. It contributes to more equitable legal outcomes by informing sentencing decisions, contextualizing behavior, and supporting evidence-based assessments of mitigation, rehabilitation potential, and long-term behavioral change.
Forensic sociology also supports rehabilitation by identifying strengths, protective factors, and evidence of behavioral change. In many cases, individuals with serious justice involvement later contribute to mentoring, violence prevention, and community-based healing work. This approach positions forensic analysis not only as a tool for legal mitigation, but also as a framework for understanding recovery, accountability, and sustained transformation.